The History of Brazil
Over eight thousand years ago, the first indigenous peoples arrived in Brazil by crossing the Bering land bridge into Alaska, then spreading the rest of North, Central, and South America.
The first European to discover Brazil was the Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral who landed on April 22, 1500. From the sixteenth to nineteenth century, Brazil was a colony of Portugal. On September 7, 1822, Brazil declared its independence and became a constitutional monarchy known as the Empire of Brazil. However, in 1889 there was military coup that overthrew the empire and established the republican government. Since then, there have been three periods of overt dictatorship, from 1930 to 1934, from 1937 to 1945, and from 1964 to 1985. Otherwise, Brazil has been a democratic republic.
The very first Brazilians were called Indians or indios by the Portuguese, and the exact dating of their origins is still in dispute by archaeologists. Most anthropologists accept that the original Brazilians were probably part of a wave of migrant hunters who came from Asia by land on the Bering Strait or by coastal sea routes along the Pacific. When the Europeans discovered Brazil, there were as many as two thousand indigenous tribes.
Until 1530, Portugal actually had little interest in its colony of Brazil, mainly because it was receiving such high profits through its commerce with India, China, and Indonesia. Due to this lack of interest, several other countries invaded Brazil, and so Portugal created the Hereditary Captaincies system to help protect the country. The major export in Brazil was brazilwood, which gave the nation its name. Starting in the seventeenth century, sugarcane became a major export, thanks to the use of black slaves on large plantations. Other European powers tried to establish colonies in different parts of Brazilian territory through out Portugal’s occupation of the territory which directly defied the papal bull and treaty of Tordesillas, but most were unsuccessful.
After it gained its independence and became the Empire of Brazil, Brazil was one of only three states in the Americas to have its own indigenous monarchy, joining Mexico and Haiti. In an unusual case, Brazil was actually the center of the Portuguese Empire instead of Portugal from 1808 to 1821. When the first Emperor of Brazil, Pedro I became too unpopular with the landed elites, he fled for Portugal and left his son Pedro II as emperor. Pedro II ruled until 189 when a coup d’état instituted the republic. He presided over the abolition of slavery in 188 as one of his last acts as emperor.
The military coup was lead by General Deodoro da Fonseca and was the countries first de facto president through military ascension. From 1889 to 1930, there was a constitutional democracy, and the presidency continued to alternate between Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais.
In 1930 a military junta took control, and later rule passed to Getulio Vargas who remained the dictator of Brazil until he committed suicide in 1954. From there, Brazil’s history has been a long journey of populism and development to make it the massive nation it is today.